Extract countries' names From Text in Python

Today, I'd like to show you how to extract the countries' names from a text using two ways.

1. The first way: extracting without using any libraries.
2. The second way: extracting by using the pycountry library.

Extract the countries' names from a text without any libraries

To extract the country name without using any libraries, we need to follow these steps:

1. Define a list of all countries name
2. Iterate over the list
3. Check each country if it exists in the text

Let's see an example

countries = ['Afghanistan', 'Aland Islands', 'Albania', 'Algeria', 'American Samoa', 'Andorra', 'Angola', 'Anguilla', 'Antarctica', 'Antigua and Barbuda', 'Argentina', 'Armenia', 'Aruba', 'Australia', 'Austria', 'Azerbaijan', 'Bahamas', 'Bahrain', 'Bangladesh', 'Barbados', 'Belarus', 'Belgium', 'Belize', 'Benin', 'Bermuda', 'Bhutan', 'Bolivia, Plurinational State of', 'Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba', 'Bosnia and Herzegovina', 'Botswana', 'Bouvet Island', 'Brazil', 'British Indian Ocean Territory', 'Brunei Darussalam', 'Bulgaria', 'Burkina Faso', 'Burundi', 'Cambodia', 'Cameroon', 'Canada', 'Cape Verde', 'Cayman Islands', 'Central African Republic', 'Chad', 'Chile', 'China', 'Christmas Island', 'Cocos (Keeling) Islands', 'Colombia', 'Comoros', 'Congo', 'Congo, The Democratic Republic of the', 'Cook Islands', 'Costa Rica', "Côte d'Ivoire", 'Croatia', 'Cuba', 'Curaçao', 'Cyprus', 'Czech Republic', 'Denmark', 'Djibouti', 'Dominica', 'Dominican Republic', 'Ecuador', 'Egypt', 'El Salvador', 'Equatorial Guinea', 'Eritrea', 'Estonia', 'Ethiopia', 'Falkland Islands (Malvinas)', 'Faroe Islands', 'Fiji', 'Finland', 'France', 'French Guiana', 'French Polynesia', 'French Southern Territories', 'Gabon', 'Gambia', 'Georgia', 'Germany', 'Ghana', 'Gibraltar', 'Greece', 'Greenland', 'Grenada', 'Guadeloupe', 'Guam', 'Guatemala', 'Guernsey', 'Guinea', 'Guinea-Bissau', 'Guyana', 'Haiti', 'Heard Island and McDonald Islands', 'Holy See (Vatican City State)', 'Honduras', 'Hong Kong', 'Hungary', 'Iceland', 'India', 'Indonesia', 'Iran, Islamic Republic of', 'Iraq', 'Ireland', 'Isle of Man', 'Israel', 'Italy', 'Jamaica', 'Japan', 'Jersey', 'Jordan', 'Kazakhstan', 'Kenya', 'Kiribati', "Korea, Democratic People's Republic of", 'Korea, Republic of', 'Kuwait', 'Kyrgyzstan', "Lao People's Democratic Republic", 'Latvia', 'Lebanon', 'Lesotho', 'Liberia', 'Libya', 'Liechtenstein', 'Lithuania', 'Luxembourg', 'Macao', 'Macedonia, Republic of', 'Madagascar', 'Malawi', 'Malaysia', 'Maldives', 'Mali', 'Malta', 'Marshall Islands', 'Martinique', 'Mauritania', 'Mauritius', 'Mayotte', 'Mexico', 'Micronesia, Federated States of', 'Moldova, Republic of', 'Monaco', 'Mongolia', 'Montenegro', 'Montserrat', 'Morocco', 'Mozambique', 'Myanmar', 'Namibia', 'Nauru', 'Nepal', 'Netherlands', 'New Caledonia', 'New Zealand', 'Nicaragua', 'Niger', 'Nigeria', 'Niue', 'Norfolk Island', 'Northern Mariana Islands', 'Norway', 'Oman', 'Pakistan', 'Palau', 'Palestinian Territory, Occupied', 'Panama', 'Papua New Guinea', 'Paraguay', 'Peru', 'Philippines', 'Pitcairn', 'Poland', 'Portugal', 'Puerto Rico', 'Qatar', 'Réunion', 'Romania', 'Russian Federation', 'Rwanda', 'Saint Barthélemy', 'Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha', 'Saint Kitts and Nevis', 'Saint Lucia', 'Saint Martin (French part)', 'Saint Pierre and Miquelon', 'Saint Vincent and the Grenadines', 'Samoa', 'San Marino', 'Sao Tome and Principe', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Senegal', 'Serbia', 'Seychelles', 'Sierra Leone', 'Singapore', 'Sint Maarten (Dutch part)', 'Slovakia', 'Slovenia', 'Solomon Islands', 'Somalia', 'South Africa', 'South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands', 'Spain', 'Sri Lanka', 'Sudan', 'Suriname', 'South Sudan', 'Svalbard and Jan Mayen', 'Swaziland', 'Sweden', 'Switzerland', 'Syrian Arab Republic', 'Taiwan, Province of China', 'Tajikistan', 'Tanzania, United Republic of', 'Thailand', 'Timor-Leste', 'Togo', 'Tokelau', 'Tonga', 'Trinidad and Tobago', 'Tunisia', 'Turkey', 'Turkmenistan', 'Turks and Caicos Islands', 'Tuvalu', 'Uganda', 'Ukraine', 'United Arab Emirates', 'United Kingdom', 'United States', 'United States Minor Outlying Islands', 'Uruguay', 'Uzbekistan', 'Vanuatu', 'Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of', 'Viet Nam', 'Virgin Islands, British', 'Virgin Islands, U.S.', 'Wallis and Futuna', 'Yemen', 'Zambia', 'Zimbabwe']

txt = "United States is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities"

for c in countries:
    #check if Country is in TXT
    if c in txt:
        print(c)

Output:

United States

But, what if the first letter of the country isn't capitalizing. Does the above code work?
To answer the question, let's try:

txt = "united states is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities"

for c in countries:
    #check if Country is in TXT
    if c in txt:
        print(c)

Output:

...

As you can see, we got nothing.

To fix this problem, we need to use the lower() method.

lower() convert letters of string to lower case and return the result

In the following code, you'll see how to use the method:

txt = "united states is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities"

new_text = txt.lower()
for c in countries:
    #check if Country is in TXT
    if c.lower() in new_text:
        print(c)

Output:

United States

Extract the countries' name from a text using the pycountry library

Install the pycountry library via pip:

pip install pycountry

The pycountry library provides the ISO databases for:

1. Countries
2. Languages
3. Currencies
4. Countries codes

In the following example, we'll extract the country from the text, and we'll get the code and official name of this country.

txt = "United States is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities"

for c in pycountry.countries:
    if c.name in txt:
        #Country's name
        print(c.name)
        #Country's code
        print(c.alpha_2)
        # Country's official name
        print(c.official_name)

Output:

United States
US
United States of America

Summary

So in this tutorial, we've learned two ways to extract the country name from a text.
If you want to extract just the countries' names, we recommended following the first method.
If you want to extract just the countries' names with information, we recommended following the Second method.